


Pause, Block, Deflect

by zilia



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Depression, Gen, Introspection, Misery, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-13 00:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4501215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zilia/pseuds/zilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers in the twenty-first century.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pause, Block, Deflect

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for depression and quasi-suicidal thoughts.

There are days, sometimes, when he feels like he's disappearing.

 

It's an odd feeling, for such a big guy. He knows he takes up space. He knows that he's imposing even when he's trying his best to shrink. And yet, it feels sometimes as though he's gradually fading from sight, as though there's nothing left to keep him tethered to the world.

 

It's worse, somehow, when he's with people. When he has physical proof that he's still there, because people are looking at him, talking to him, interacting with him. It makes him want to reach out and beg them to hold onto him, as though brief, fleeting human contact will be enough to stop him from turning inside out like a black hole, from vanishing altogether. His skin screams for touch, and he can't bring himself to ask for it. The other side of the table might as well be a million miles. Clint might as well be in another dimension, Natasha a figment of his imagination. _How are you?_ they ask, and he automatically answers, _I'm fine, I'm fine. How are you?_ Pause, block, deflect. Like fighting for his life. Like defending himself from the people who supposedly care about him the most. And somehow they just _leave_ it there, they don't keep asking, they believe him. Of course they believe him, because they're his friends and they trust him and they're good people and they don't expect him to lie. _Help me,_ he wants to say, _Can't you see I'm vanishing?_ But he doesn't, and they don't, and every day he feels a little bit less real.

 

The twenty-first century has more ways than ever to make sure people can communicate. There are hundreds of ways he could connect with people if he wanted to, without having to leave the house or even his bed; Stark certainly made sure that his new apartment had the best that modern technology had to offer. The world has never been smaller, and yet Steve has never felt more alone. Sometimes he longs to be tiny again, to just shrink and shrink and keep shrinking until one day he's so tiny he simply evaporates. He can't give up; he _mustn't_ give up, not when he's had the good fortune once to grow, twice to survive, three times to be able to help people. But he wants to, oh, he wants to.

 

When Fury asks him to move to Washington, he agrees, not because he particularly relishes the idea, but because he's desperate to get out of New York. Being surrounded by his past is suffocating him; before the serum, he'd never left the city. There's a long list of places where history isn't likely to haunt him. He might as well start there.


End file.
